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Friday, April 19, 2013

NRO: This Time It’s Different?

From National Review Online:

The
Gang of Eight’s “comprehensive” immigration-reform bill contains a
number of superficially attractive security mandates: It would require
the federal government to have 100 percent “situational awareness” of
the border, to catch 90 percent of illegal border-crossers in
high-traffic areas, to establish a tracking system to address the
problem of those who enter the country illegally but overstay their
visas, etc. So attractive are those goals that we have supported them in
the past, on the many occasions upon which the government has promised
to achieve them. Disappointingly, Washington keeps failing to deliver on
its promises. The unspoken premise of the Gang of Eight bill is: This
time it’s different. We are skeptical that this is so. And regardless,
there is a great deal in this package that is deeply objectionable.

Unfortunately,
this is the same amnesty-first/enforcement-later model that has burned
us before. Senator Marco Rubio’s admirers like to compare him to Ronald
Reagan, and in this case he resembles the 40th president in putting too
much faith in the willingness of Washington to deliver border security
in the face of opposition from ethnic-solidarity politics and the
cheap-labor lobby.

Congress
mandated the creation of a visa-tracking system, for instance, in 1996.
Since then, Congress has on multiple occasions reiterated its demand
that the executive branch comply with the law, and the executive branch
has on each occasion failed to do so: Bill Clinton’s administration
failed to do so, George W. Bush’s administration failed to do so, and
Barack Obama’s administration thus far has failed to do so. The system
the bill would mandate is even weaker than the system already mandated:
It would apply at airports and seaports, but not for land crossings. If
we are being asked to believe that this requirement will inspire
President Obama to suddenly get religion on the subject of illegal
immigration, we say that the evidence is against such a proposition, and
that hoping that whoever follows him will do so is simply an act of
faith — and though prayer availeth much, it is insufficient grounds for
national-security policy.